Dice, Camera, Action!: van Richten's Guide to-
by Wramysis
Summary: As van Richten heals and recovers from casting the Vistani ritual spell on the Waffle Crew, he reflects on his past and how his and Paultin's stories became intertwined.


A.N.: This story was written for the "Wafflefam Writing Club" prompt: 'hunted'. The timeline shifts in places, but this story starts right after the events of episode 52, and is basically my interpretation of Paultin's backstory, which Nate and Chris have never gone into detail about. This story includes some of the old van Richten lore (in fact, many of the old official stories were released as 'van Richten's Guide to [insert monster name]' so I used that as the title. This story also alludes to things revealed by Chris and even Paultin's original character sheet (and maybe explains why early in the series he's said to have blond hair, but his bio picture showed him with dark hair; nevermind that his possible ancestor in another timeline also had blond hair). But mostly this story was inspired by the line Chris gave van Richten: "Do you know how many times I've died?"

* * *

Rudolph van Richten awoke with a gasp, leaping from the mattress before finding himself restrained by sweat-soaked sheets tightly wound across his frail body. He listened to the rasp of his panting breath, forcing it to slow as his mind worked frantically to orient itself. He was somewhat disappointed - yet not entirely surprised - that he was still alive; _wherever this was_. The air was still, and had the stale musty odor he associated with closed indoor spaces. There was no light in the room no matter which way he looked, but the turn of his head caused something soft and damp to fall off his face. S_o I'm being cared for, then,_ he realized.

He allowed himself to relax somewhat, surmising that there was no immediate threat nearby. There had been many times before when he had regained consciousness with a foe still looming over him, ready to begin feasting. Only van Richten's quick wits had allowed him to escape in those moments, when the enemy was too startled at seeing its seemingly dead meal get up off the floor and flee to give pursuit. There had been times, however, when van Richten had purposefully chosen to remain on the ground and play dead. Those had been his darkest moments, when he had been weak enough to give in to despair and abandon the Morninglord's calling. _Let me stay dead_, he had pleaded to the dark spirits that ruled over Barovia. But the only sound he would hear in reply was the gnawing of a beast's fangs against his flesh and bone, and the agony of slowly dying until his heart finally stopped... only to eventually beat again. For his wounds would inevitably heal, and the blood would rush back into his veins. It would sometimes take months to recover fully, during which he would be crippled by weakness and pain. Now whenever van Richten ran, it wasn't the beast that had felled him which he feared.

It was the suffering of living.

~.~.~

"The bargain was struck, but the debt has not been repaid."

Van Richten gazed around in disbelief at the horrible remnants of the Vistani camp, as if he had blacked out the destruction and carnage of the last half hour from his mind. The zombies had already shambled back into the forest, dismissed by the lich king that now stood before him. This close, van Richten could feel the waves of cold energy emanating from its skeletal body. As a priest of the Morninglord, he could also sense its enmity for the living, and an answering call deep inside him to smite the undead creature. No doubt the lich felt a similar discomfort this close to a servant of its enemy, yet for the moment - this brief, awkward, and unforgivable moment - the two were allies.

The lich's words finally registered in van Richten's brain. He turned to the creature angrily. "What more could you ask of me?" Although in actual fact, van Richten realized, the lich had asked for nothing. The distraught priest had wandered into the zombies by accident, although it was possible that they and the lich had been drawn to his dark thoughts as he brooded over the fate of his son. It was unlikely to be sympathy that had motivated the undead to become instruments of van Richten's revenge. More than likely, the lich had seen it as an opportunity to test the priest's dedication to his god, and that by doing nothing to stop their massacre of the Vistani camp, van Richten's own soul was now in peril.

The thought of souls made him stare at the glowing phial hanging around the lich's neck. The pearlescent light actually came from the objects floating within it; fragments of souls torn from the Vistani as they lay dying. The lich noticed his gaze and reached a bony hand to lift the vial off its silver chain, dangling it before the priest's eyes.

"I have been richly rewarded for this night's work. Some of them were immensely powerful, such as that woman who cursed you."

Van Richten suppressed a shudder. His misfortunes had begun the moment the Vistani had brought their sickly child for him to heal. He had tried all the remedies he knew, but the boy was already too far gone, and the priest was unable to save him. Fearing their vengeful curse, van Richten quickly offered them anything they desired, and they chose his son. Being separated from him had been almost too much to bear, but when he learned they they had maliciously handed the boy over to a sadistic fiend, who then proceeded to turn him into a vampire, van Richten's world crumbled. His son was old enough to understand what he had become, and he begged van Richten to help him die and return to the Morninglord's grace. The priest did so, unable to hold back the tears of helplessness and of shame that two innocent children had now died due to his failures.

Yet was any of it truly his fault? Such senseless loss of life was commonplace in Barovia, where the townsfolk had all but stopped believing in the Morninglord's light. If anyone was to blame, it was the devil Strahd, who had allowed this misery to befall his own people. These realizations infuriated van Richten, fueling the righteous anger that had smoldered inside him since coming to that dark land.

But now, standing among the mangled corpses of those who had wronged him, the old priest did not feel his usual pride in doing the Lord's work. No matter how he tried to justify it to himself, what had happened here tonight was evil. His knees buckled as he was overcome by sudden weakness. Was his god's power abandoning him?

"The woman's curse is beginning to have its effect on you," noted the lich in a raspy voice as it loomed over him. Van Richten was now on his knees, finding himself without strength enough to stand. Whether or not the Vistani curse was meant to slowly seep away van Richten's life, the lich would surely take advantage of this chance to end him. The priest's eyes were drawn to the glowing vial filled with souls, and he realized in horror that his would soon be joining them.

A skeletal hand grasped his brow, and van Richten sent a mental cry to the Morninglord for forgiveness. The lich began to chant, and the glow of the trapped souls pulsed from a pearly blue to a rich scarlet hue. The priest could feel his heart race, beating in the same rhythm as the color-shifting phial. He could hear himself scream in pain, but his mind was strangely detached from it, as if his consciousness had already separated from his body.

Then a new cry pierced the darkness, and the hand holding his head suddenly let go. Van Richten felt strength flow back into his body, but also a sense of wrongness. He shakily climbed to his feet, glaring at the undead creature, but the empty sockets were directed elsewhere. The old priest turned to follow its gaze, and saw the head of a small boy peeking up from inside an overturned wagon. Perhaps the child had been sleeping during the attack, although the priest doubted that was possible given the loud clamor of the recent battle. Most likely the bloody massacre of his family had left the boy frozen in terror, only to have the horror triggered again by the sound of van Richten's tortured screams.

"It seems we forgot one," observed the lich. "I will dispatch it shortly."

The priest moved instinctively to place himself between the boy and the monster. The lich cocked its head at him in mild surprise.

"Don't touch him!" growled van Richten, though his own boldness surprised him. "I will not allow another innocent child to suffer. I have already seen enough death to last me a lifetime."

The undead's toothy grin widened. "How fortunate for you, then, that I successfully blocked the Vistani's curse."

The feeling of wrongness that Van Richten had sensed earlier intensified. "What do you mean?" he asked sharply, though he feared to know the answer.

"As I said, I owed you a debt. That woman had cast upon you a curse of death, but such power holds no sway over a master of the undead like myself. I have shared with you my lifeforce. You will be unable to die as long as I continue to exist."

The priest was stunned, unable to speak or physically react to its words. But the creature did not wait around for a response, chuckling darkly to itself as turned to glide silently back into the moonlit woods.

The boy was suddenly at van Richten's side, clutching his pants leg tightly in little fists. The old man lifted him up easily, surprised at his renewed strength, yet also disgusted as he realized its source.

"Don't worry, I'll take you somewhere safe," he cooed gently to the boy, stroking the dark curls of his Vistani hair. "Tell me son, what is you name?"

"P-p-paultin," stuttered the soft voice, before he buried his face in the fur mantle of Van Richten's cloak. The old man shifted the cape across his shoulder to cover him, and the two began the long journey back to his home.

~.~.~

"Don't let them eat me... DON'T LET THEM EAT ME!"

Van Richten dropped the shovel he had been using and raced over to the source of the scream. He had left little Paultin under a tree to take a nap, trusting that he would be safe inside the magical circle of salt that the priest had sprinkled there. When van Richten finally reached the large rowan tree, he noted in relief that the boy was merely experiencing another nightmare. He gently shook Paultin awake, then glanced around their camp to see if the noise had attracted any unwanted attention.

"Did I scream again?" asked the boy sheepishly as he stirred, aware that doing so could have put them in danger.

"It's fine," answered van Richten automatically, as he always did. But things were obviously not fine. Both of them were aware that these episodes were becoming more frequent. The boy had suffered a horrific experience only a year ago, it was true, but until now he had shown sign of lingering psychological trauma. Something must have happened recently to trigger the nightmares.

Van Richten took the boy's hand and led him back to the abandoned wizard's tower that he had been slowly converting into a somewhat habitable state. There were secret traps and deep dungeons that the priest had not yet managed to seal off, so the pair of them lived primarily on the first floor where things were relatively safe. Paultin looked around slowly, still groggy from sleep, and asked, "Where's Yan?"

Van Richten paused in midstep, faltering momentarily as he realized that he had not yet come up with an excuse to tell the child. He quickly put aside the shovel he still carried in his other hand, which seemed a far too obvious sign of his recent dark deed.

"He returned to the Vistani," the priest said simply.

"Really? I thought they hated him," Paultin said in surprise, wrinkling his brow.

"Well, who can understand Vistani and their ways?" joked van Richten, his chuckle sounding perhaps a bit too forced. It was true, however, that those happy-go-lucky travelers were still a mystery to him. When the exiled Vistani man had approached van Richten a week ago, the priest had taken it upon himself to shelter him, hoping that in return, he might learn something about their people. He still hoped to one day rid himself of their curse, so that the lich's gift would become unnecessary.

However, Yan had proven to be more quick-witted than van Richten had expected. He seemed to have pieced together Paultin's identity, and began making efforts to befriend him. Van Richten was aware of this but took no action, wanting to see what the man might do. In the predawn darkness, Yan had carefully picked up the sleeping boy and placed him in van Richten's wagon, and the priest finally made his move. With a single swing of his staff, powered by all the fury of a parent protecting his child, van Richten had knocked Yan's head clean off.

The head was now in a jar in his study, preserved in magical oils. The priest had discovered several interesting scrolls in the tower, including one that would allow him to speak with the dead. In time, Yan would reveal all he knew of the Vistani. It was certainly a dark form of magic, but van Richten reasoned that his soul could not possibly become more damned than it already was.

~.~.~

"Why are we going away?" asked the sullen teenager, kicking at the pebbles on the road.

Van Richten sighed for the twentieth time as he finished loading their wagon. He had offered Paultin all the excuses he could think of-enemies had been spotted near the tower; there were fiends in far off lands that needed slaying; a village was suffering from a horrible affliction and needed his healing skills. But what the old priest could not reveal to the boy was the actual truth.

"Do you have your amulet on you?" van Richten asked, trying to change the subject.

The thirteen-year old rolled his eyes and lifted the silver chain from around his neck. Hanging from it was a small rook, the holy symbol of the _Lords of the Ten Towers_. Van Richten knew nothing about that enigmatic deity except that they were associated with dreams, and hoped that they could offer the boy some protection against his nightmares. Unfortunately, their severity had only grown worse over time, to the point where Paultin even claimed to be hearing voices in the daytime. All auguries pointed to the Dark Powers as the source. Van Richten did not know why these remnants of dead gods should take such an interest in the boy, although Vistani notoriously played a role in almost any tale involving their dark gifts. It was obvious that if Paultin were to have any semblance of a normal life, he would need to leave Barovia. Ideally, he would remain under the radar of his disreputable clan, as well. After the episode with Yan, van Richten had cast a spell on Paultin to lighten his hair and straighten his curls, making his heritage less obvious. But the illusion was broken in those rare moments when Paultin felt joy rise within him and began to sing. Perhaps Yan had manged to teach the boy a few of their people's entertaining ballads before his demise. Or maybe it had come from the melancholic dusk elves who often camped near the tower, who had also unfortunately introduced Paultin to the vice of drinking. Yet wine was sometimes the only thing that could keep the nightmares at bay and allow him to sleep soundly.

Van Richten would miss the sweet sound of that voice, not yet deepened into manhood.

"Come, sit up front with me," said the priest, swinging himself onto the bench from which he steered the wagon. Paultin couldn't seem to decide between maintaining the typical teenage defiance and acquiescing to the excitement of this impromptu voyage. Reluctantly, he took a seat beside van Richten. The man snapped the reins and the wagon began to move forward.

"You still haven't said where we're going exactly," remarked the boy, his expression wistful as he looked over his shoulder at the shrinking tower.

Van Richten smiled at him and handed Paultin the reins. "Where would you like to go?"

Paultin stared at the leather straps, not understanding what the old man might be up to. "What do you mean? Don't you have a plan? Some sort of map to follow?"

The priest shrugged unconcernedly. "Oh... I'm sure we'll get to wherever we need to be. How about you focus your thoughts on that? What would be a good place for you to be?"

Paultin stared at van Richten as if he were the one who had drunk too much wine. But the old merely leaned back in his seat and pulled over his eyes the wide-brimmed witch's hat he kept around the wagon to protect his balding head from the sun. At least, back when he had lived in lands where there had been any sun. He could guess the boy's thoughts, wondering if the old man had finally gone mad, or if this might be some sort of prank. Van Richten pretended to be asleep, but out of the corner of his eye, through a small opening in the hat, he watched both Paultin and the road. He knew how much distance lay between the tower and the boundaries of Barovia, where the mists would prevent anyone from escaping. Anyone, that is, but a Vistani.

The temperature dropped suddenly as a wall of mist appeared, and the horse whuffled in surprise. Paultin, his attention wandering in the typical manner of teenagers given a monotonous task, did not appear to take notice. There was no obvious reason to suspect that the road didn't continue onward through the mist to eventually come out the other side. The wagon proceeded to roll forward unimpeded, and van Richten allowed himself a small smile of victory.

~.~.~

Slowly the room lightened as van Richten's eyes began to mend. He placed the wet cloth back over his face so as not to startle his caretaker, who would surely be taken aback by his rapid recovery. It was not long before he heard the sound of footsteps.

"I just have one more patient to check up on before the end of my shift," a female voice called out from outside the room. He heard the door creak open and the footsteps approach the bed. Van Richten debated to himself what the best way might be to announce that he was awake, and finally settled on loudly clearing his throat.

He heard her shuffle back in surprise. "Uh... Sir? Are you awake?"

"Yes madam," he replied, his voice sounding muffled underneath the cloth. "Would you happen to know the fate of my companions? The ones who most likely found me in this state?"

"Oh, the adventurers the King hired?"

Had the dwarven king hired them? Van Richten actually knew nothing about what the group was doing in Citadel Adbar. He had run into them by accident while infiltrating the false priests of the Morninglord, who had been tricked by the Dark Powers into hunting the tiefling Lilith. In the fifteen years since van Richten had delivered Paultin out of their clutches, those godlike spirits had redoubled their efforts to sow mayhem and despair, keeping the old man extremely busy. Still, it had pleased him to see that Paultin was doing well, even if the feeling wasn't mutual. Unfortunately, stripping the boy... no, man... of his memories had been the price for keeping him safe.

"Possibly so. Are they alright? Did they say anything about me?" Van Richten could not help himself from wistfully adding, "did any of them happen to come visit?"

"I don't think so," his caretaker answered gently. "As for them being all right, no one else has been brought here, so I guess that means they're okay?" _Or they could be dead_, the priest reasoned to himself. "But no, I'm sorry sir, no one has been by to see you."

"That's all right," he sighed, then automatically sat up and felt the towel drop from his face before he could remember himself. His eyes having finally healed on their own, he could see that he was in a small chamber carved from raw stone, with a wide-eyed dwarf cleric eyeing his face in astonishment. He quickly thought up an explanation she might believe.

"It seems by some miracle I am healed. I am sure I have your careful ministrations to thank for it, as well the Mornignlord's grace, being one of his priests."

"But your eyes! You had no eyes!" she exclaimed, peering at him in wonder.

"Ah yes, an accident I'm afraid," he said, blushing. "I thought my goggles would be enough to protect me."

"They were melted to your face! It took our smith an hour to chisel them off!"

Wishing to avoid a scene, van Richten felt the urge to get moving. "So sorry for the trouble I caused. Please, tell me how much I owe you for your care."

The dwarf seemed at a loss for words. Van Richten reached into his belt pouch, pleased to feel that his money was still there, and slipped a few gold coins into her hand. "May the Morninglord bless you, and this place." He found his cloak tossed over a nearby chair and his cane leaning against the wall. With these items in hand, he bowed to the still speechless woman, and exited from the room.

It was a long road home to Barovia, and there would be much to do when he got there. But if what Lilith had said about the death curse was true, then perhaps the priest's tortured existence was about to come to an end. The thought warmed his heart, and he found himself humming an old hymn to the Morninglord as he began making plans for his next-and hopefully final-battle.


End file.
